The Best Activities to Teach First Words to Your Speech Delayed Child

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Why playing?
Playing is an essential skill for how children learn about the world and following rules. Cognitive ability in a toddler is correlated with his play skills. It also gives the context needed to teach language, and essential prelinguistic skills.

My favourite games
Games are strong routines that are fun and engaging. It can help bridge that gap between being socially aloof and a child who laughs so loud that’d hurt your ears.
Peekaboo
Tickling
Swinging hands
Jumping
Upside Down
Falling
Singing songs with movements
Turn-taking games (bubbles, balls, cars, microphones)
You see these activities don't need a whole lot of toys, rather, you become the toy and have a great time with your child.

You become a social reinforcement to your child, teaching him that it’s actually fun to play with you.

Adding language to games
Once your child knows the routine and tries to initiate playing with you. You can teach the words associated with it. For example, tickling, you can teach the child to say “tickle”. And when you do tickle once and stop, put your hands above his belly and wait. Most probably he would pull your hand towards him. You should resist and say “TICKLE!” and then tickle him. BUT don’t expect him to imitate, if you do it enough times, the words will come out eventually.

If your child can already say the words, you can go on to make the utterance longer. Using the example of tickle again, you can ask where he wants to be tickled. Then you can ask your child to create a simple Verb-object sentence. “Tickle hand”. “tickle tummy”, “tickle forehead”, “tickle nose”, etc… And you can actually teach body parts as well in the process, pretty cool.